First steps in a new software project

This week I started a brand new project. This time it’s the start of product development, rather than just an internal project to get something running. And it really is new, so everyone is new and we’re setting up everything from scratch.

So this is my list of things to go from nothing to a fully fledged software engineering project.

Step one, getting the right tools installed for everyone off the bat makes things easier later on. Standardise upfront rather than try to merge half a dozen separate ideas about whats best later.
For this team we will be testing a GUI so Rational Functional Tester (RFT) with Rational Team Concert (RTC) is the basic tool set.

This gives us all the project management tools in RTC, plus source control, and easy collaboration. Then when we get as far as something to test RFT will already be there.

RTC is the best tool I’ve used for starting projects, it lets you start capturing requirements and high level ’stories’ and start hanging individual tasks off of them. Code sharing is very easy, and delivering code changes under tasks makes the project tracking pretty seamless.

Step two, a build server. It’s easy to link into RTC to have a build engine that allows you to schedule builds as frequently as you like. It also allows people to kick off builds of the mainline code plus their ‘local’ changes. So you can build and unit test changes before delivering them to the main codebase. The outline of this can be set up quickly, the detail of full build and kicking off unit tests takes longer but is a top priority.

Step three is a Rational Quality Manager (RQM) server. This can be linked to the RTC server so that it gets notified when builds complete and also allows you to create defects in RTC if tests fail. RTC can then view defects which block test cases. RQM lets you define what environments you will test in, how you will split things into test plans. And makes it easy to start defining test cases and where they will run. Ultimately it can be used to report on test status, with built in dashboards and report generation.

The last step are some test servers which run adapters which connect to the RQM server. For our needs some of these will use a command line adapter, others will use RFT. This allows RQM to kick off tests against the systems and gather the results.

As a set of tools they are not light weight. Requiring at least 4 servers (RTC, RQM, build, test) but then they are a very powerful combination. I don’t expect to have any spreadsheets or hand-crafted chart generation being done by the team. All of the information we require comes straight from the tools, when we report project status we will use the tools not hand-made slides or spreadsheets. I also expect to be able to get tests automated and managed from the start. So no trying to retro-fit automation onto manual tests.

After one week we have RTC setup with the first wave of requirements stories and tasks, and a code base setup with components for our new product. We have an RQM connected and being told about builds. We have the skeleton of a build system. It’s not doing much other than defining the build types we will have, but the framework is in place.

Next week I’ll setup my first test server. Hopefully in a very short space of time we will have everything we need to develop and test a product. Complete with project tracking and reporting, all while most of the team are focussed on what we will produce, not tied up with figuring out infastructure.

Retrospective on an agile project

Yesterday I finished my 5 week project. I still can’t believe it’s been 5 weeks, it’s gone so fast.
I wrote a bit about it a couple of weeks ago. And now that it’s finished I wanted to reflect a little on how it went. This, of course, is part of the agile process. They call it a retrospective, and in theory you do one every iteration to consider what worked, and what didn’t. Since my iterations were just one week long I didn’t write anything down for each one.

One thing I said in my previous post is that I wouldn’t work long hours to achieve results, as it is unfair on future projects to misrepresent what can be done in the time. Almost the day after posting that I found myself breaking that rule.

I worked several long evenings, but I have an excuse-ish. One of our big problems was getting a system set up so that we could start on some of our tasks. But it gave us enormous problems, and I was tired of burning days on what should have been a couple of hours of set up. So I started working into the evening in the hopes of putting us back on track. Regardless it still took almost 2 weeks to get a system we could use. This was incredibly frustrating and I broke my rule because I didn’t consider the task part of what the project had to achieve. It was just a pre-req. But an important reminder that sometimes the things that take the longest are things you don’t even officially plan or size. I should have taken half a day at most, but it burned more like eight and a half.

I also broke my rule for another reason, perhaps one I should have factored in. We often needed to work with a team in the US, specifically with us raising questions or problems, and getting responses. To that end I joined a weekly conference call from 17.30 till 18.30. I also found it was better to check e-mail into the evening, since it was the difference of responding to a question and getting a second response by the next day versus finding the question the next morning. It’s easy to burn through days bouncing question/answer/question back and forth at a rate of one request/response per day. The conference call helped to speed things up. However the reality of relying on a team in another timezone is that you make faster progress if you spend more overlapping work time.

The common theme to these two rule breakers is things that felt unrelated to the *work*. Just stuff we needed to be able to get on with the doing. That said I need to remember in future to factor this stuff into short projects.

In terms of project results, I have mixed feelings. We failed to achieve all I wanted. However, I did achieve the major strategic investment I wanted. I never expected to be ‘done’ in 5 weeks. Just to have kick started it enough that it becomes a long term commitment to the direction. Although my project is over, most of the team will continue. Everyone agreed that we were going in the right direction, and we did enough to convince people that it *can* work.

I’m very happy about achieving the important attitude shift, and establishing the relationships necessary to succeed in the long run. At the same time I’m very frustrated by some of the things we didn’t achieve already which I feel we could have.

For me personally a big part of the project was trying to lead. My natural instinct when people aren’t doing what I’d like, is to wish I had the AUTHORITY. You know? That feeling that it would be easier if I had been bestowed with power such that people must do as I say. Perhaps this is what attracts people to management. To have that explicit power defined. However, I do not want to be a manager. So the trick for me is trying to lead with no explicit authority. And boy can that be frustrating!

I feel I had a particularly challenging crew. On previous projects I’ve worked with keen, enthusiastic people. Willing to listen and discuss. Ultimately accepting the group decisions, and working furiously towards the agreed goals.
This project could not have been more different. One person in particular had very specific views on what they wanted to do, and how. Whilst this fit with what was necessary that was fine, great even as they made great progress. But they would sometimes decide randomly on another priority. They totally didn’t get the idea of agile and committing to deliverables for this iteration. On one particular occasion when I asked on a Monday about getting started on one of our committed items, I was told ‘I’m not going to look at that this week’, other times I asked for where they had gotten to, and what was blocking progress. Only to be deflected with questions about other things. The attitude being that their tasks were none of my business, they didn’t want to explain the problems or the specific progress. They just wanted to be left alone for as long as it took to do it, their way.
On one occasion I got the Instant Message equivalent of being hung up on. Rather than answer my question I was told ‘I need to concentrate’ and they logged off.

It would be easy to say that person was just difficult, and in future I’ll only work with easier people. But of course I realise I have to learn to get the most from people like this. Perhaps I should have been more direct and just asked ‘ why don’t you want to tell me what the problems are?’

In that regard I feel I did badly as a leader. However in other regards I was getting better. One of my problems as a techie is that I come up with the solution I want, and I try to get people to do it my way. For this project I made a conscious effort to define the result I needed, and accept solutions that weren’t ‘my’ way, so long as they would meet the requirements. Sometimes this means watching something take longer than I think it should take. But maybe that’s just because the solution will be better?

So I still have much to improve on. That said, I was explicitly thanked by the manager in charge of the project for my leadership. So it can’t have been all bad

My new Toyota Aygo

After what felt like a never ending wait, it finally arrived. To be fair to Toyota they always said it was not due until sometime in October. So the fact that I actually got it in the last days of September is nothing to complain about.

But as an impatient person, having to wait a couple of months between signing the forms and getting the car was hell. All of the financial implications of the buy desision, but none of the pay off of having something to show for it.

But now that terrible time fades behind me as I enjoy driving my shiny new car.

Although I’ve only had it for a couple of days I thought I’d still write some first impressions. I may remember to follow up later with longer term thoughts, but I may also forget.

The big change for me, is that this is an automatic. The first I’ve ever owned. And in fact the test drive I took before buying this car, was the first one I’d ever driven. By all accounts it’s not a traditional automatic. This is a Multi-mode transmission, which means I can if I chose control when the gear shifting occurs. Or just leave it in E for easy mode.

So far I’ve driven exclusively in easy mode. It’s a little weird at times, to feel the car changing gear. Though I have found I’m getting used to when it is going to change, and it is much more natural feeling when I’m anticipating it.

The automatic nature does mean that it rolls forwards if you don’t have your foot on the break, however I don’t think that applies on hills. Unlike a normal automatic, I think this one can still roll backwards if you don’t come from the break onto the power. However I’ve not tested this enough to be sure. It feels like if you have been on the accelerator, and only tap the brake, then it keeps enough throttle going to the engine to keep you moving. However if you come to a complete stop, after a moment the brake pedal gives a little. Like it’s settling down. I *think* that at this point the car effectively disengages all power to the engine. Rather than having it fight against the brakes all the time. Which makes sense. However this means when you come off the brake, it doesn’t necessarily engage enough power to stop you rolling the opposite direction until you tap the power again. Again this is all theory based on the way it feels to drive. At some point I will try it under more scientific conditions. (Or maybe just read the manaul)

In terms of speed it is pretty fun to drive. The accelerator pedal has a deffinate resistance line between ‘pootling along’ and ‘going for it’ Such that if you just press until you meet some resistence barrier, then you mode at a fairly sedate pace. If you push down through the resistance one of two things happens.

If you are coming off the line then it realises that it should not attempt to change up gears and you hit the real power revs for first and go zooming off, keeping your foot down means it changes later and gives much more power range from each gear. This is all very natural from a standing start. However if you were already in motion when you put your foot down, unless you are fairly slow and gentle to bring up the speed, it mostly decides that you clearly want to drop a gear to get more power. Sometimes even drop 2 gears.

That’s quite an odd sensation, and I think the thing that most people don’t like, there is suddenly a small lag between you making the desision to go faster, and it reacting, because first it has to drop a couple of gears, then the accelerator has the desired effect. I’m getting used to this lag time, and mostly it just means accounting for the extra time. I guess it will mean that in some situations I should err on the side of stopping, rather than trying to make a gap, because the time to react will just be a little too long. Only time will tell if it is a significant issue.

The handling feels very sharp, I’ve not really thrown it around yet, but certainly around mini roundabouts it feels good.
Having ‘downgraded’ from a mazda 3, I’ve not really noticed it being a big difference in terms of handling. I wouldn’t say I’ve lost any real world performance. The difference is that the Mazda 3 could deliver extra power in the gear I was in, where the Toyota Aygo may need to drop a gear to deliver.

I do miss my climate control, and I suspect I will miss it more in the winter as I have to fiddle with where air is blowing and hot hot etc. The main thing I’ve noticed so far, is that my Mazda had 2 air vents in the central console as well as two on the outside, which allowed me to have air blowing at both my hands on the steering wheel. On hot days it’s nice to keep your hands cool this way. However the aygo has only the outside vents, so only one hand gets to stay cool. Again at the moment I’ve noticed it, and it will probably be most of a year before the weather is hot enough for me to notice it again. Probably not a big deal.

I already absolutly *love* having an AUX in on the stereo. Yes I probably could have done something to get an equivilent in any car. But it’s great to be able to plug my N810 in and listen to a much larger selection of music, or podcasts. The 6 cd changer in teh mazda was just not enough capacity, and too much hasstle. My only problem now is finding podcasts that Kat and I both want to listen to, my main selection are heavily in the computing/geek field.

The Aygo is also a 3 door. ((I’ve never understood why a boot counts as a door, particularly in teh aygo where it’s just the window that opens) I decided that for the amount of times I have passengers in teh back seat, it was not worth the extra cost of a 5 door. Of course at the moment I’m giving a friend lifts to work everyday, (his new car arrives next Thurs) so I am experiencing the nuicance of having to shift charis around to let passengers in an out. However, in real terms I’m unlikely to do this many times during my ownership of the car, so certainly worth saving the money.

Fuel economy is still an open question. I picked it up with the tank about 3/4 full and I’ve only done about 75 miles in it. So until I’ve done a few refills and get a feel for the real millage it’s hard to say if it will make the published figures. I’ll be happy with noticably better than the mazda.

The glove box…I wrote when I made the choice about the fact that toyota wanted £75 to put a glovebox ‘lid’ on what was otherwise just a pocket. I felt that I needed something in the car that I could put things out of sight. I also felt there was no way I was paying £75 for the privilage of something that has been standard on cars pretty much since their first invention. I negotiated it into the deal for no extra cost, and I’m a) glad I have it, and b)really glad I didn’t pay for it. It really is a flimsy thing, a fairly cheap plastic panel with a basic latching mechanism. However I do think it is useful to have somewhere to put some bits and pieces that aren’t just in plain view. Both from a security standpoint and a general looking tidier standpoint.

I also got rear parking sensors. Mainly because I wanted to get more things thrown in for free. I have yet to use them in earnest to help me park, maybe in time I will find it a boon to parking in small spaces. However, for the moment it’s just a beeping that happens whilst I’m reversing.

That’s about it for the moment. I like it very much, it’s different to my last car, but I don’t feel like I’ve compromised much in the search for a smaller car. Had climate control been an option I would have taken it, but I’m sure I’ll live without it.

3 strikes out.

On Saturday I went to London. I was going to have a play with the N900 at the Nokia flagship store on Regent street. Unfortunately they didn’t have one, else this post would be about my hands on time with it.

Instead I am given cause to consider switching network provide for my phone. Currently I use 3. When I was looking a little over a year ago they seemed to offer the best combination of price, and terms for someone like me wanting unlimited web use with a relatively basic call/sms allowance. I’m not a heavy phone user, just a heavy Internet user.

Choosing involved reading through all sorts of small print in the various ‘unlimited’ offers and comparing the very real limits involved. (Seriously trading standards, are you asleep? Have you not noticed that these people basically lie to the public with ‘unlimited’ when it is no such thing? Isn’t it your job to do something about that??)
I chose 3 because they placed no real limits on what you were allowed to do with the bandwidth, Skype is positively encouraged, where others expressly forbid any kind of VOIP.

However, I immediately had one draw back, which is basically no signal at work. I knew this would be the case going in, it is a minor irritation which has not gone away. I can stand in certain places and get signal, but certainly not in most places.

I’m going to call that Strike 1

Yesterday, in London I was sitting in a coffee shop on Regent Street, wanting to look up exactly where the Nokia store is. I hadn’t written down the address, because I knew I’d just look it up when I needed it. I had full signal on my phone (E71) so I fired up the browser, selected the 3 connection and let it connect, but then fail to actually give me any data. No gateway reply, or some such.
I tried several times, but despite apparently having great signal, and apparently being connected to 3G, it wasn’t actually working. That’s extremely annoying. And I recall other times when this has happened to me.
My unlimited data plan seems pretty limited when it’s not working.

Strike 2

Later that same day I was sat in a pub with a friend, not far from Regent Street. I was expecting Kat to come join us at some point, and wanted to make sure she hadn’t gotten lost or anything. I checked my phone to find I had zero signal. In a pub, next to a window, in the middle of London!! At first I figured maybe my phone had crashed or something, it seemed far more plausible than getting no mobile signal in the heart of our countries capital city. But after a reboot, still nothing.
I walked into the street to see if the pub had lead lined walls or something. Still no signal. The friend I was with, had perfect signal for T-mobile. And when Kat arrived she also had perfect signal for O2.

Strike 3, you’re outta there.

I still have something like 6 months to run on my 3 contract, but I am now officially looking for the deal I want next. I’m almost tempted to get an iPhone from O2, sell the iPhone and stick the sim in my N900 when I get it. I’m not sure if they give such a good contract deal outside of the iPhone. But I think I might go ask.

I think back to the first mobile phone I owned, when coverage was a big factor, who had the best etc. That was a really long time ago. I honestly can’t understand why every carrier does not have perfect coverage everywhere by now. The UK is hardly a big place, in the grand scheme of things. Can somebody wake up and kick the mobile carriers into shape? Is it too much to ask in 2009 that I get perfect signal regardless of which company I pay for coverage? That when I buy an unlimited dataplan, it actually *means* unlimited?

Apparently it is.

Automation isn’t free, and change isn’t either.

When I started this blog I intended it to be about both woodworking and software engineering. It’s pretty clear that my focus has been woodworking, and more specifically woodturning.
However, that’s not to say I’m not busy thinking about software engineering, I just don’t often think to write about it.

This week I found myself starting another agile project. A little over a year since I wrote about being ‘so agile they’ll need another word‘ and so I thought I’d write up some more thoughts on the subject of software engineering and agile projects.

Last year the project was one I had spent some time building support for, to overhaul our automation infastructure to be more sophisticated. It required a change in the accepted way of delivering results. Which meant convincing project managers that the new information would be *better* than what they were used to. Then convincing management that thoe whole package would be worth the cost of about 4 person months.

I really enjoyed that project, and I learned a lot. Both about how to run an agile project, but also about how to get one off the ground in the first place. I came to the following conclusion

People don’t know what they’re doing.

By which I mean, all of those people who ‘control’, managers, project managers, strategists etc etc. They mostly don’t have grand plans and visions. They are now ochestrating clever and subtle schemes to reach their goals. They basically are just winging it, like the rest of us.

The implications of this realisation are simply that if you have an idea of what you want to change, and can formulate a half decent plan to achieve it. Then there is a good chance that managers and planners will seize upon it with joy. At last! A plan! I don’t mean to undermine what these roles do, they keep projects moving, they understand what is required to deliver a project. They remember what ahs gone before. But the important realisation is that they rarely have time to think about great changes from the ‘norm’ and they will gleefully accept that idea you’ve been toying with, if only you can pitch it in their language.

Last year the project was a great success. And one year on I believe people are still feeling the benefits, looking back over the project it is clear that things went better, ran smoother. The project delivered on it’s promises.

That makes for a good reference when talking again about a project to run. And so it is that I started a few months ago paying attention to general talk around adopting a new product to manage our test tracking and reporting. There was a general feeling that we ought to be looking at it, but by default everyone is already completely commited to plans. And so ‘looking at it’ means, occasionally having a meeting to talk about it, but not actually having any time to *do* anything. It seemed clear that this would be my next target.

Part of the message I try to get accross about why such projects are necessary is : Automation isn’t free. And neither is significant change for the better. In short, you can’t expect to acheive great things for nothing.

For too long auotmating tests was sold as expensive up front, but then you got a lot ‘free’ like platform converage, repeatability etc. I think that this message set the wrong picture. Because many automation infastructures are woefully under funded for on going work. The attitude is very much that ‘we paid the high up front cost, now this bit is free…right?’
Well no, automation isn’t free, it requires people to make sure things keep ticking along. It requires updates to support new things. It requires skill and knowledge in what is often a complex environment. However, it has such a high rate of return, such an amazing return on investment, that it is easy to think of many of the benefits as ‘free’

I struggle to push the message that you get what you pay for, and when you pay into your automation infastructure you get a LOT. But it DOES require on going investment.

In this case I’m not dealing with automation as such, but we are talking about a big change. It has the potential to make many areas of our project ‘governance’ much better. It has fantastic scope to open us up to options that simply can’t happen without the first big step.

And it is this that I told people when looking into adopting this new technology. Anything *less* than a couple of person months dedicated time to get things going is a joke. If you aren’t prepared to stump up the resource for at the minimum that much. Then stop talking about it, stop thinking about it, because you’d just be wasting your time. Sure there are plenty of other things that you need to acheive with that resource, and you need to understand the relative priority of this compared to those things. But don’t for a second kid yourself that the team can effect such large change without some real time to plan, test, try, deploy.

And so here I am, 1 week into a 5 week project, where I have been given time, and a student. To really get to grips with how we will adopt this new technology. My goal is to have it either going into production at the end of the project. Or have a very specific list of blockers, and associated defects and actions to resolve them.

I love working this way. I have a set of stakeholders, people who will be the real customers of the system. and I meet them weekly on Friday’s. In that meeting I show them what has been achieved during the week, and get their approval to mark certain tasks as ‘complete’ Then I work with them to define the tasks of the next week. Sometimes this means making them agree amongst themselves the priority order for new tasks. Then everyone knows where we are, and what we’re doing. Why we are doing this first instead of that. The list of requirements can grow as and when the stakeholders think of them and define what they want. But they also get to help chose which of those on the backlog they *really need* this week. The great advantage of this is that you could keep the project rolling until people run out of *must have* items. You can stop at any time that people feel they’ve had most of the value. In essence the stakeholders are the ones who will ultimately decide some fraction of the requirements they raised, really weren’t that important afterall.

It also means that last weeks work finished on Friday, and next weeks work starts on Monday. That sounds kinda obvious, but pychologically, I am not starting to think about the challenges of next week yet. And those of last week are done, for better or worse I met with our stakeholders and showed them what we had and that was the end of the iteration. Working this way keeps me focussed. Everything boils down to ‘what do I have to show the stakeholders on Friday’. It makes for an intense working week, and sometimes it’s hard to go home at the end of the day and NOT keep working. But I have to remember that if did that it would be a disservice to anyone in the future. It would be dishonest to show a project completing on schedule, if it actually took me a weeks worth of over time to do so.

Week one is always hard in terms of just ramping up, but week two is where things are going to get serious. The level of expecation goes up a few notches, and my little team needs to start delivering real change. I’m looking forward to it, I know that success in this project is more than just delivering what I said I could, it’s showing that this whole way of working delivers consistent results. It means that next time I pitch a project, my job is a little bit easier.

Many projects I’m sure, struggle to justify the cost in terms of the benefits they yeild. I find a different challenge, trying to remind people there is a *cost* and what that is. It easy to see the value, but automation isn’t free, and change isn’t either.